Jerry Brown

With all the talk about the upcoming Congressional midterms, local races are getting overlooked. This is unfortunate for a couple of reasons. First of all, despite a century plus of actions and efforts to the contrary, federalism is still alive, and state governments still matter. Second, these races have an impact upon national elections because states will be redrawing their districts in the wake of the 2010 census.

It would be a massive undertaking beyond my abilities and time to look at each state’s legislative elections, though most projections I have heard have the Republicans gaining a massive amount of seats in state legislatures. Republicans are projected to switch majority control in about five or six states at a minimum. Here I will be taking a look at each of the gubernatorial elections.

On a side note, it may seem odd to label these elections as pickups and holds. After all, it’s not as though governors gather en masse and vote, so having a “majority” of governorships seems not to be that big of a deal. But for the aforementioned reasons, it is important to win as many of these races as possible. Currently there are 26 Democratic governors and 24 Republican. Republicans will certainly have a majority after Tuesday. As is the case with the House, the only question is how big of a majority.